TM´s can still afford to get implants. Trauma Damper, Cerebral Booster 3, Muscle Toner 1. The Trauma Damper alone would almost be worth it. Build for resonance 5, increase resonance, get under the knife. The option would have been worth 30 old karma IMO. Logic +3, Fading -1. Now guess what your stream would be tied to.

As for increasing resonance to 6 for the sake of keeping it, I personally wouldn´t. Develop a threading habit and you should be fine with base CFs of 5.

^^^ Was gonna post this. Too bad sourcerors have a pretty uninteresting set of sprites and singularitarians are weird as hell, but LOG-tied fading is pretty sweet (I'd probably get a cyberfoot with a nanite hive in it and some gene therapy like optimization (LOG) and/or PuSHeD over the muscle toner though). You can get a lot of stuff for 1 essence, even without resorting to more than alphaware.

For the sake of flavor, I really don't like getting implants on magicians/technomancers/etc. It's too... eh... min/max-y.

Anyway, I'm happy with the amount and quality of replies so far. Thanks all.

Sourcerors have Code sprites and Machine Sprites. I would not call that uninteresting. They are lacking in Paladin sprites, but those are only an echo away. (@Bobfly: I was of your opinion at first, but found a solution. The basic set does indeed lack combat sprites.)

So... I was reading up on Echoes and scuffing at Flexible Touch, since you can take a # of complex actions equal to the rating of a signature to scrub it off the face of the matrix. Prety slow going, but worth it as a compromise when you gotta be sneaky, I thought. Use that karma for something better. But then it hit me. I don't know what constitutes a use of a Resonance ability. Maybe TMs are bleeding resonance all over the place, maybe every damn node they go to is drenched in the stuff! Maybe you're gonna be plastering the walls with it automatically faster than you can clean up (in which case, what's the damn point of allowing you to try in the first place (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif) )
So help me Dumpshock, you're my Only Hope.
I expect threading and tasking both definitely count.
Does every use of a CF count?
Even passive uses? Do you leave a fine film of sticky resonance on a node when it checks against your Stealth CF to see if you're being detected? Hell, do you leave a snail track everywhere you 'go' with the CF active, even if nothing is looking at you?
Welp. Well, I suppose it depends on how much of a dick your GM is being.
Maybe I need to look at that Echo again.

Resonance, ware, and karma:

IT WORKS LIKE MAGIC PEOPLE

If you have Res 6 and get 'ware and it drops to 5 you have to (submerge and) raise it to 7(6) paying 7*(3 or 5) karma (21 under SR4, 35 under SR4A).

It's technically up to the GM, but according to the story flavor and even some other abilities and echos, you leave traces of yourself everywhere. Using Blur as an example:

@Draco18s: Yes? Has that rule changed with SR4A?

No, but people in this thread were talking about 6 -> 5 raise back to 6 as being 30 karma (6*5), which was wrong.

Right, yeah, I get that every use of Resonance leaves skidmarks. But what constitutes a use of resonance? Do you drip on nodes just by passing through them, since you're accessing the matrix using your brain? That leaves TMs open for tremendous dickery by belligerent GMs, the way I see it. Of course, only other TMs can see the trail, but I bet the corps employ quite a few at this point.

Actually I wonder how many that would be. Are there any figures on TM rarity?

NOTE: I realize of course that this discussion is pretty much purely academic.

Uses of resonance would typically be denoted by any action that requires you to actually roll your resonance attribute. But for just gallivanting around in a VR playground, I doubt any sensible GM would seriously up your resonance trail if you aren't really doing anything.

That... Makes a lot of sense, yeah. Doomsday scenario averted, heh. Thanks for bearing with me.

Could you give a page reference where it explicitly states that you use your pre-cyber value for Magic/Resonance?
I mean, if one of the Devs(Tiger Eyes) even uses the post cyber value, I think the post cyber value is what is supposed to be used.

I wouldn´t agree with you in that case. Costs for increasing an attribute work from the new attribute rating, and implants reduce resonance, rather than causing a virtual reduction.

As written, TMs are less than 1 in 100,000 (see SR4A). Note that we didn't say how much less... and consider corporations are still hunting them down and trying to actively peel their brains apart. All those TMs that were killed or stripped of their powers during Emergence? That cut down the population significantly. Look at the big technomancer groups, like KivaNet: 10 TMs (covering all the NAN), or the Co-op: 7 TMs.

Anyway. This is just in reply to the idea that corps employ quite a few at this point -- every TM they peel apart, is one less TM to employ. And how many TMs will work for a corp when they might end up on the disecting table themselves? I don't know that outside of a few of the megas (like Horizon and Evo), any megacorp has a significant population of TMs working for them...

This is kind of how I saw it as well...

GAWD people, don't you read my posts?

I was initially replying to this:





Which is wrong. So I posted the right math, then got told I was an idiot for even posting it, so I posted WHY I posted it and now both of you are calling me an idiot for posting the WRONG math!

Hey Draco... Don't know how it is supposed to work (it seems kind of fuzzy)... We always count reductions in stat as a LOSS of the stat, regardless of the source (augmentation, loss due to a crisis of faith, etc.)... as such, you may use the rules to purchase as they are stated... New Rating x 5 so in the example that everyone is citing... it would cost 30 Karma to return to a 6 (after initiation of course, to raise the maximum back to a 6)

May not be exact, but it works...

Keep the faith man...

Head + Desk
*Smash*
And people wondered why this forum was my low point in ShadowRun.

Page 62, BBB:



Magic and Resonance work exactly the same. Raising Resonance to 6 when one has a point of cyberware costs 30 karma. But the result is a Resonance of 5. Raising it again to have an actual 6 requires a submersion AND 35 KARMA.

Well there you go...

No need for the Desk + Head... Walls work so much better, at least there you can get a pretty nice head shaped hole...

I'll admit that I'm not the best person to ask about this. But for what it's worth, here's the actual text:



and



So, to me, it sounds like it actually reduces your attribute, and you need to spend the karma to raise it back to that level. It doesn't drop your "functional" attribute (note we don't say magic 4 (3) -- there is only ever one stat for magic, unlike attributes that are modified by something). So, you start out in character generation with a Resonance 5. You pay your BP to get resonance 5 (40 BP). You get 1 essence worth of 'ware, and your Resonance drops to 4. You've already paid to have it be 5 (you buy resonance prior to the 'ware; so you've just blown 10 BP for the privilage of having that ware). Once game play starts, you have a Resonance 4, and a Max of 5. You want to increase it, and you pay 5*5 (25) karma to get it to 5. If you want to raise it to 6, you must submerge once & pay 6*5 (30) karma.

The penalty comes during chargen. If in game play, a TM with Resonance 5 gets some ware, then their resonance drops to 4 (totally screwing up their living persona, I bet), and they'd have to paid again to bring it back to 5.

Either way, you pay twice for that point you lose.

Tyger Eyes, then the amount of Karma that a (near) cyberzombie pays to increase their magic isn't exorbitantly huge:

Magic 1, Max 1, 0 initiations

to

Magic 9, Max 9, 8 initiations.

Is the same cost for a normal mage to awaken and raise his magic to 9 and get 8 initiations.

And he doesn't have the cyberware penalties!

Yes to requiring submersion, no to 35 karma. Your quote goes on to speak of the penalty being a full point of lost resonance. So you start at 6, lower to 5 due to implants, submerge, and increase back to 6 (6*5, as no special rule applies).


That is the penalty. The loss of a point of magic/resonance and a reduced limit for all purposes.

Edit: Too damn slow.

For what it's worth, after reading SR4A again, I'm going to have to go with Tiger Eyes on this one.

Won't the guy with 5 lost Essence have to pay his way up from 1-6 twice? He can't have Magic 1, get 5 points of cyberware, and then go up to 9 - his magic'd drop to 0 which, as I understand it, irrevocably burns him out. It's not much, admittedly, but it's something.